Mikael Seifu Searches for the Lost Beat

Ethiopian artist Mikael Seifu makes hypnotic electronic music that merges the traditional sounds of his native country with skittering modern rhythms and production—creating a new homegrown sonic lineage in the process. By Ryan Dombal.

Mikael Seifu was once tempted by the gleam of the West. Born and raised in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, the producer spent his adolescence downloading 2Pac and Master P songs, one at a time, using Napster and a spotty 28.8 kbps connection. Then, spurred on by his businessman father as well as a naive drive for mainstream musical success, he enrolled in New Jersey’s Ramapo College having never even visited the States before. He was soon dismayed by what he calls “the fierceness of the American machine.”

“There’s just a massive pressure, dude,” the 27-year-old says over Skype from his small villa in Addis Ababa. “What I felt and saw there was this lack of purpose being accepted as the norm—people just working their way through as a cog.” The realization came in the midst of his music business, history, and performance studies, when he ended up at a conference in Manhattan featuring panels full of songwriters, producers, and lawyers who were working with the biggest names in pop. “It felt weird to see the specialization of the different sub-sectors of the music industry,” he says, thinking back. “For too long, I was caught up looking towards the exterior, the superpowers, the most-written-about cultures. I let my attention veer off course—but my displaced heart has now shifted its allegiance back with Ethiopia.”

After taking a life-changing, ear-opening class taught by the experimental composer Ben Neill, Seifu dropped out of school following his junior year, headed back to his hometown, and continued to hone his style. His SoundCloud tracks piqued the interest of old friend and fellow producer Dawit Eklund, who also grew up in Addis Ababa before going to college in the U.S. “His stuff was all super experimental with a zero-fucks-given attitude in terms of marketability,” says Eklund in an email. “Totally in his own lane.” When Eklund co-founded the Washington, D.C.-based 1432 R label last year, Seifu’s Yarada Lij EP was its first release.

The four-track 12” established Seifu’s unique musical perspective: a blend of sampled Ethiopian folk music, freewheeling improvised instrumentation, and skittering rhythms reminiscent of UK producers like Jamie xx, Four Tet, and Burial. He’s since followed it up with a few more increasingly mesmerizing tracks, including last month’s “The Lost Drum Beat”, which has Seifu putting the repetitions of traditional Ethiopian music in hyperspeed in a quest to merge the modern with the deep, eternal spirit of his birthplace. He will release a second EP, Zelalem, on Brooklyn’s RVNG Intl. label this fall, with tentative plans for a full-length next year.

Eklund considers Seifu’s music a continuation of the wide-ranging sounds of Ethio-jazz, a beloved genre that peaked in the 1960s and ‘70s, before a brutal Communist regime took hold of Ethiopia, crippling artistic expression. Technically a democratic state since 1991, the country is now home to rapid economic growth along with a questionable human rights record. On a day-to-day level, Seifu tells me that water outages are common, and, just as we begin our interview, the power in his neighborhood goes down. But such inconveniences don’t seem to bother this laid-back musician too much; speaking in a patient baritone and sitting in front of a yin and yang poster, Seifu gives off an air of mysticism as he talks of intangible energies and pressures that surround us at all times. At one point, describing his spiritual beliefs, he says, “I just vibe in my inner world.”

While his work is currently being released on American labels, and a recent round of European tour dates had him playing to larger and more enthusiastic crowds than what he’s used to in Addis Ababa, he’s still most interested in delving into the music of his own country. He dreams of starting his own label and helping other local artists to follow his lead. He hopes for the day when more people in his city recognize experimental electronic music as a valid path to ego-flattening enlightenment. As we speak of these potential futures, schoolchildren can be heard playing right outside of Seifu’s window.

Mikael Seifu: The idea that a producer can also be an artist in their own right and not just produce for vocalists has not taken root here yet. There are so many great musicians here, and it would be brilliant for them to understand the potential of the electronic medium as a very expressive art form; I’m really tired of trying to explain that to people locally. Right now, there’s me and [fellow 1432 R producer] Ethiopian Records, and then there are producers with massive intellects who are caught in the side effects of today’s market-oriented way of living. I see legendary producers stuck in this way of looking at themselves, and, slowly but surely, they’re ultimate potential dwindles for the sake of financial rewards.

There’s also the younger generation who’ve had the chance to grow up with whatever technology they could get their hands on, who actually believe in the democratization of production and journey along that path. But again, they’re still caught in that mainstream way of dreaming that I was before I thankfully got to myself; their hearts and minds are gripped by the American or the European machine. The mainstream media is what creates the void. It’s something that one can only realize by oneself. You can tell somebody they’re living in an illusion, but suddenly you’re the illusion to them, because you pointed out that illusion.

Pitchfork: How did you break out of that illusion yourself?

MS: It was a gradual process. Just asking myself basic questions like, “Why do I feel some type of divide from my own culture?” It’s not a locally-induced situation. It’s caused by letting kids grow up watching MTV, which will destroy the mind. It made me realize I was perhaps not doing myself, or my potential, justice. The brain-drain phenomenon is happening everywhere, and America is one of the biggest contributors in mutating minds and spirits.

Pitchfork: Why did you originally decide to go to America for college?

MS: My dad had done some post-graduate work there when he was younger, and he hinted that an American undergraduate education could be a better fit for me. His generation was a special generation. Back when he went to America, Ethiopians were known to not desert their country. They were all into getting back to the motherland and helping out everybody with their newly acquired knowledge and using it to the best of their capacity to solve problems. I grew up looking at how my father works, how he’s still working. He embodies this idea that you can never work too much.

Pitchfork: How was your idea of the U.S. different from the reality of it?

MS: That’s a very long conversation. [laughs] Youth is deceivable; it’s not all glitz and glamour. Some basic things were better than I had imagined, like transportation, commerce, access to information. But at the same time, in America, you’re either a cog and you don’t know it, or you’re a cog and you’re cool with that, or you’re living off the grid. It was just too much for a little African like me to handle. I was not meant for that world. On the other hand, Ethiopia is way, way more spiritual than any place I’ve been on Earth.